Trump's Fox News Addiction Is Even Worse Than We Knew

Donald J. Trump is an experiment in real time, but with no control group. His surreal tenure is an attempt to answer the question: What if we elected someone who does not read and gets all his information from cable news? This is not an exaggeration of any kind. A piece from Olivia Nuzzi, published in New Yorkmagazine late Sunday, says once more—this time for the people in the back of the room—that we have elected Fox News Grandpa as President of the United States.

The story's primary concern is Trump's cozy relationship with Sean Hannity, Fox's chief blowhard correspondent. But it also shows just how much Trump behaves like a typical Fox News viewer: He consumes far too much of it every day and far too little of anything else. He lacks reference points for what is happening in the world outside a closed information system tailored to a particular ideological agenda.

There is, for instance, a remarkable story about Trump's shifting viewing habits. He went from watching a number of cable news shows during Executive Time each morning to just Fox & Friends, which he now live-tweets—often using the text of on-screen chyrons verbatim, or misquoting the hosts:

One account of how Trump started watching so much Fox and Friends: he was getting enraged and causing problems when he also watched some morning MSNBC and CNN, so Spicer and Priebus convinced him to stick to the show where they knew he'd only be praised. https://t.co/TitM5eHkMfpic.twitter.com/DUuhMM83UL

Trump is not that old, and concerns about his mental health were once put to bed with a medical report from presidential doctor Ronny Jackson. (Now that we know more about Jackson, his assessment of Trump seems highly questionable.) But it is amazing to learn how much the president ends up regressing to childlike behavior: a primal thirst for praise, a constant need for reaffirmation, a catastrophic reaction to criticism or bad news, a stubborn refusal to do anything Unless I Want to Do It.

His advisers, in turn, have adapted to his behavior, essentially tricking the Leader of the Free World into cutting out habits that was causing problems—in this case, consuming news sources that are at least oriented towards presenting the world as it truly is—in the way you might try to stop a toddler from banging his head against things.

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Except that Only Watching Fox is no cure at all. Nuzzi's piece has an odd quality throughout: While there isn't much there about Trump's info-consumption habits we didn't already know in our heart-of-hearts, it is also relentlessly terrifying to read—particularly because it is so thoroughly reported out.

(It has plenty in common with the New Yorkerprofile of former National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster, which illustrated the scene of a typical Trumpian national security meeting, in which the president is presented with extremely sensitive and complicated information via giant pictorial.)

At numerous points, it's made abundantly clear that the president is dependent on people for information who have no real concern—at least on their programs—for whether the information they are presenting is accurate. That begins with Hannity:

White House staff are aware that the calls happen, thanks to the president entering a room and announcing, “I just hung up with Hannity,” or referring to what Hannity said during their conversations, or even ringing Hannity up from his desk in their presence ...

... “Generally, the feeling is that Sean is the leader of the outside kitchen cabinet,” one White House official said, echoing other staffers (current and removed).

So Hannity is getting Cabinet-level input on high-level policy for the administration, despite his complete lack of expertise in any area and flagrant disregard for objective reality. (Elsewhere, Nuzzi characterizes him as having "never been about the news; he’s a specific form of entertainment, a high-energy delivery device for a simplistic far-right worldview that is less about ideology and policy outcomes and more about winning.") It's almost as if Trump is being advised by...Trump.

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But it's not just Hannity:

The former White House official called the trouble caused by Hannity, and Fox more broadly, “a fucked-up feedback loop” that puts Trump “in a weird headspace. What ends up happening is Judge Jeanine or Hannity fill him up with a bunch of crazy shit, and everyone on staff has to go and knock down all the fucking fires they started.” ...

... But the current official acknowledged that it has created a different set of problems: “Sometimes on Fox, a lot of stories are embellished, and they don’t necessarily cover the big news stories of the day. When they cover the smaller stories, if that gets the president riled up, then that becomes an issue. Whenever he tweets, all of us do a mad dash or mad scramble to find out as much information about that random topic as possible. We’re used to it in a lot of ways, so it’s part of our morning routine.”

So the President of the United States is fed a steady diet of misinformation, a situation his advisers determined was preferable to consuming traditional news—that is, factual information about the world gleaned from journalistic processes—because the latter only made him mad. Except, because all he has to operate on is misinformation, and because he thinks whatever he knows is all there is to know, he insists on weighing in publicly. And he's often still raging, lashing out wildly at the demons conjured up by his supposed allies on the Fox Teevee. Those same White House advisers then spend some portion of their day cleaning up the mess.

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(This once culminated in a call-in to Fox & Friends that was too whacked-out even for Brian Kilmeade. After repeatedly trying to steer the president back to some semblance of reality, the Fox host ultimately pulled the ripcord on the interview like he was Mike Francesa dealing with a wild-eyed Jets fan, reminding the president that he surely had Things To Do besides rant like...well, one of Fox & Friends' viewers might if they were allowed to call in.)

As if to hammer home the absurdity of this exercise, those White House advisers also openly acknowledge that they have no more ability to advise the president or shape his view of world events than do the shock-jock TV personalities of his favorite channel:

The White House official assessed the influence of White House officials and other administration personnel as exactly equal to that of Fox News.

Again, we all basically knew this, but Jesus Christ. On the one hand, you have career public servants from, say, the State Department, who have years—sometimes decades—worth of expertise in a particular field. On the other hand, you have Judge Jeanine. It's 50-50 whose advice the president will use to make the call.

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